the silent isle imbowers
by Moonlit-Jeannie
Summary: There he weaves by night and day/ A magic web with colours gay/ He has heard a whisper say/ A curse is on him if he stay/ To look down to Camelot.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of its characters. I also do not own either _Lancelot and Elaine_ or _The Lady of Shalott_ by Tennyson or any Arthurian legends, which is where the inspiration for this fic came from. This fic will be very angsty and will also include character death and suicide, so you have been warned.**

* * *

"_I want to go with you, Mother. Please, why can't I go?"_

_The sad blue eyes set in an even paler face than his own locked on his as his mother sighed softly before shaking her head. "It __isn't safe, darling."_

_It isn't safe. Kurt knew everything there was to know about that—even at the young age of eight. Going outside without his mother, father, or nurse wasn't safe. When he was allowed outside, he wasn't allowed beyond the gates—and cert__ainly never into town._

_And the worst part of it all was when he asked why because the reply would always be the same._

"_Because you are special."_

_He didn't feel special, not at all. He had horses that he could not ride and beautiful boats made of stiff parc__hment and the paints that mother gave him that he could not sail. But one day, he discovered what they really meant when they would say those words to him. As he watched the other boys from the village run along the river that ran behind their house, he fi__nally understood. It was not because he was special. It was because he was different._

_And different was not good. His parents knew that._

* * *

_The reflection of the boat paints a shadow in the beautiful, clear water of the river as it drifts. Drifts. __Drifts toward the brightly painted city hidden between two mountains. The water is the same colour as the wide, unseeing eyes of the boat's lone passenger. It is strange how peaceful he seems in death, with his full lips drawn into a smile and the pink of__ his cheeks not yet faded to the dull, ashy gray that they will undoubtedly be by the time the boat reaches its destination._

_A note is stiffly pinned to his shirt, both stunningly white as the clouds in the tapestry that is tucked tightly around his legs._

_If you listen closely, you can hear the birds singing for the boy, "Tirra lirra."_

_Listen._

* * *

_Lady Islene of Astolat tears out of her bed before she is fully able to extricate herself from her bedclothes. She does not register the ice cold stone__ floor or the fact that she is only in her nightgown and has not even pulled on a dressing gown to protect herself from the elements of winter that the stone walls of her home do little to deter. Her feet slap against the stone as she runs feverishly down __the hall to the very last door on the right. She takes a deep breath, holds the breath, and opens the door. And releases the breath before collapsing back against it._

_Her beautiful boy is fast asleep, his hair (her hair) swept across his forehead. His eyes__ (her eyes) closed and blissfully unaware of his fate. His heart (her heart) still beating (beating) while he sleeps. But for how long? The young man in her dream was several seasons older than her baby boy that lay before her, but he still had the glow of__ youth upon his face. He could not have been any older than seventeen._

_Islene turns away and shuts the door behind her before turning to the stairs and climbing to her own fate, the duty that she has set before herself since her first dream some fifteen ye__ars before. It is a curse, her life, but she must live every day as is destined until that day (she knows it's coming, it is upon her) that she is to leave her family defenceless to their own fates._

* * *

_The last thread is finally knotted and Isl__ene is finally able to breathe for the first time in sixteen years. Her life is hers again. The facts have been shown to her as they will occur. Deaths, marriages, births, she has seen them all in her dreams. She has known how she will die since she was th__irteen and that night that she woke with the taste of river water still heavy on her tongue, choking her and pulling her under. Her nose burns in anticipation and her eyes begin to run._

_She also knows how her son will die, her beautiful angel that made her__ damned life worth living. And her husband__,(;)__ her lovely, strong, caring husband…his heart will stay strong in her absence, Kurt will keep him strong and give him something to live for, but—_

_She plays with the corners of the tapestry—Kurt's, his was last—__and takes in the colours. So many reds, so much black—so much blood and so much death._

"_Mother?" her son's tiny voice calls up the stairs. She has instructed him never to come into this room and her Kurt is a good boy, he has listened._

_She breathes in the __cloth and allows her tears to fall and mix in with the blue waters that carry her son to his fate._

"_Make sure your father's ready, darling."_

_The tapestry is ever so carefully folded before being stored in the wardrobe. Waiting until its time._

"_Mother, he i__s ready! He is."_

_She descends the gray tower and once she reaches the bottom, gathers her son into her arms._

"_I love you."_

_Kurt frowns, stomping his small foot, "I want to go with you, Mother! Please, why can't I go?"_

_Islene gazes into her son's eyes, memo__rizing them, though she will never forget their colour. She will also never forget the way they look when he is dead, gazing blankly at a blue sky that refuses to obey the dark shadow that his death casts over her heart and will, and in the future, over h__er husband's._

_She shakes her head and closes her eyes, trying in desperation to clear the images from her mind. There is no reason to dwell on death any longer, there is no reason to dwell on anything._

"_It isn't safe, darling."_

_She runs her hand through hi__s hair and down the side of his face, the smooth skin soothing her unsteady heart._

"_Now go with your father. I will see you again before you know it."_

_Kurt turns and reluctantly makes his way down the hall, his hand listlessly trailing along the wall._

_Isle__ne pulls out the note she wrote eight years ago after she gave birth to Kurt and touches it to her lips and slips it inside the book that lies on the table beside her husband's chair. There is nothing more._

_She slips out the door silently, but the door clo__ses with a resounding thud behind her, shutting her off from her husband and child as she steadily walks toward the river._

"_It is done," the voices call._

"_You've done well," the birds respond._

_She has done nothing. Her son will do nothing and her husband w__ill do nothing. Everyone walks to their deaths. She is walking steadfastly toward hers as the wind blows her braid loose._

"_Mother?" another voice calls, this one is not one of the voices from her dreams. This one is a voice that she knows all too well._

_She__ knows this part. It was the hardest part._

_Still she walks, unwaveringly to the river, the sound of small feet rustling in the grass behind her._

"_MOTHER?"_

_The water is around her ankles now, her knees. Her skirts are becoming weighted and now the water's __to her waist, but the voice will not stop._

"_Mother, NO! Come back! MOTHER, COME BACK!"_

_The water is in her mouth and burning her nose and her eyes and she can hear no more._

_Then she is no more._


	2. Chapter One

**Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of its characters. I also do not own either _Lancelot and Elaine_ or _The Lady of Shalott_ by Tennyson or any Arthurian legends, which is where the inspiration for this fic came from. This fic will be very angsty and will also include character death and suicide, so you have been warned.**

* * *

He first finds the room when he is twelve years old, what most would consider to be a short four years after his mother's death. But for Kurt, each day feels like a century. Every time he goes outside now, he hears the twittering of the birds and the rush of the water and sees his mother walking steadily on to the river. Her braid swinging in the light breeze is in every horse's tail that he sees flicking away flies as they make their way down the road. Her swaying skirt is in every curtain that blows in the breeze of an open window.

It is no longer such a task to keep him inside. It is much more difficult to get him to even leave his room, so afraid is he of what he may have to face. He is sure that his father is the gladder for it, though he does put up an admirable effort when it comes to his attempts to have Kurt join him for dinner.

But there are shadows in the halls and shadows on the stairs—and even the places that are not dark can still hold danger, Kurt knows.

The room is not large, nor is it small. There is no bed, or else Kurt is sure he would even sleep there. Though, to be honest, it has been years since he has slept through the night and he does so even less now that he spends most of his time in this room. Mostly, the room is empty—with dull grey walls and matching curtains, though Kurt takes those down as soon as he discovers the room, as he has done in his own chambers. The only items inside the room are a wardrobe, a large loom, and a mirror to allow the person using the loom to see the other side of their work. The mirror is positioned just so and he is able to see everything out through the window from the seat at the loom. The first time he discovered the room, he found a basket that someone left sitting on the stool in front of the loom. It was full of threads of the most vibrant colours. Reds and blues and yellows and greens fill the basket. There are oranges that match the sunset and some that match the flickering fire. Kurt is instantly taken in and is delighted to find that he is able to capture the beauty of the outside world and freeze it in time.

There is no more swinging braid and no more swaying skirt. Instead, he confines townsfolk who pass by his window in a silent prison for his eyes only. And it is beautiful and captivating and his in the way that nothing has been in such a long time.

He drapes the first completed tapestry over the wardrobe and admires it for but a second before he sits down at work on the next. There is so much happening. It is all so different day to day and minute to minute that no picture he depicts is the same as neither the one before nor any after.

He is certain that no one knows of his secret. Not where he is or what he is doing. Certainly not his father who most days keeps himself shut up in his own chambers before going to dinner in hopes that Kurt will join him, and certainly not his nurse! No, she spends most of her days by the stables visiting the man who works there and Kurt is sure that she was never as glad as the day that he shut himself in his rooms the first time and did not come out for a fortnight.

Sometimes, during the spring and summer months, Kurt will open the window while he works. Groups of birds will occupy the ledge and trill beautiful melodies and sometimes he cannot help but sing along with them. It is days like that when he feels almost happy, but it has been so long since he has experienced happiness that he cannot recall it and he dismisses the thought. He is sure that he will never be happy again.

But still, he sings along.

_"Tirra lirra."_

One morning when Kurt is fifteen, he is stunned on his way to the room when he sees his father making his way down the stairs that lead up to it. He is even more stunned at dinner (one that his father has explicitly asked that he attend) when his father announces his intentions of marrying the Widow Hudson.

That day, Kurt works on a different tapestry. It is not bright and filled with colourful, singing birds and the laughing children that play down by the river. Instead, it is filled with darkness. Blood reds make up the sky and dark grey shadows fill every surface. The river is a dirty grey-green colour that looks thick and overpowering as it pulls its victims into the rushing water. There is his mother, her eyes are the brightest thing in the tapestry and he has to look at his own in the mirror before him to make sure he picks the closest colour. Her hair is loose from her braid, flying out around her like wings. The boy that drowned two years before is there with her.

He had been steadily weaving as the group of children played with their boats down by the river. The eldest was Kurt's age, but the boy who drowned was probably no more than five summers old. His boat had been swept away and destroyed after being thrown against some rocks. The elder brother looked away for just a moment and the small child had jumped in to rescue his boat, but was pulled under. There was a little girl with them, even younger than the boy and Kurt remembers her loud sobs as the older boy retrieved his dead brother from the river. Had he sounded like that when his father and the stable boy had finally come running to his screams? When his father had gathered him up in his arms, hiding his face in his jacket to stifle his sobs and the stable boy had waded out to pull his mother out of the water?

The little boy's blond hair sticks to his face, his eyes closed (Kurt never saw his eyes, never knew the colour, never knew the boy or his family, but he watched him die) with a peaceful expression on his face. It is different than the expression that Kurt places on his mother's face. Her face is full of fear. She is terrified. He knows that she walked into the river on her own, he watched her, but he chooses to believe that she didn't want to. That she was afraid of what might happen to her. That she was afraid to leave him alone, and to leave his father alone. Because, if she wasn't, then he has to wonder something else entirely—did she love him?


End file.
